What's the preferred C++ idiom to own a collection of polymorphic objects?

Question

Consider the following classes

class Base {
public:
    virtual void do_stuff() = 0;
};

class Derived : public Base {
public
    virtual void do_stuff() { std::         


        

Answer 1

Other alternatives worth considering are to use boost::ptr_container, or even better, use a library like adobe::poly or boost::type_erasure for your polymorphic types, to exploit value-based run-time polymorphism—avoids the need for pointers, inheritance, etc.